1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to graphical user interfaces (GUI), and more specifically to a method for previewing the results of possible user selections within a GUI.
2. Description of Related Art
Many applications provide graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that contain “sticky” pushbuttons that are used to navigate through the data represented by the matrix. The buttons can be in up (deselected) or down (selected) state. Some buttons interact with currently selected buttons, others buttons deselect the currently selected buttons and become the only ones selected. Yet others, when deselected, cause another button to become selected. In other words, selecting or deselecting a button can have varying effects based on what else is currently selected. When the user moves the mouse pointer over any button and clicks on it (mouse button pressed and released with the pointer still over the on-screen “button”), the state will change as defined in the state table. This change is visually represented by zero or more buttons becoming selected (“down”), and zero or more buttons becoming deselected (“up”), depending on the current state and which button is clicked.
Currently, there is no way for users to preview the next state that would result from clicking on one of the on-screen buttons. The act of showing a button visually down when the mouse button is held down is widely known in the art. However, previewing the states of the other affected objects in the GUI (to show the results of completing the click) is not. Instead, the user must execute the click in order to discover what the next state will be. If the resulting state is not what the user wants, the user must return to the previous state and try another selection.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method for previewing the results of clicking on an on-screen object before actually executing the selection.